From slacker to starter: ACU offensive lineman sees football as a way to a better life

Joey D. Richards/Reporter-News
Abilene Christian University offensive lineman Will Latu looks on from the sideline during a football scrimmage Saturday at Shotwell Stadium.

Joey D. Richards/Reporter-News
Abilene Christian University offensive lineman Will Latu sustains a block during the Wildcats' football scrimmage Saturday at Shotwell Stadium.

Joey D. Richards/Reporter-News
Abilene Christian University offensive lineman Will Latu protects his quarterback during a football scrimmage Saturday at Shotwell Stadium.

Aside from a pickup basketball game from time to time, Will Latu really wasn’t interested in sports growing up in St. Petersburg, Fla., — or work for that matter. In fact, to this day, the Abilene Christian junior has never even filled out a job application.

In essence, he was a slacker.

“I liked to call it chillin’,” he said with a laugh.

Not that Latu ever got into trouble, drugs or mischief running carefree in the neighborhood. He was just into taking it easy. Never mind he had a body made for football. He was 6-foot-5, 315 pounds by his junior year at Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg.

Yet competitive sports just weren’t his deal.

“I didn’t see it as motivation to get out of the neighborhood and do something with my life,” he said. “At that time in my life, I was just going through the motions of life, not giving a care about what I did on a daily basis. I was pretty much doing what I wanted to do 24/7.”

And what he wanted to do had nothing to do with football — much to the exasperation of then-Gibbs football coach Yusuf Shakir.

“Every day, he would ask me to play,” Latu said. “I would just brush him off. He never gave up. He’s the one who contacted my dad on a daily basis, too, to persuade him.”

Toward the end of his junior year in high school, Latu’s dad finally gave him the talk about what he wanted to do with his life. His father, in talking to Shakir, knew football was a no-brainer.

That’s when Latu finally started looking around him and thinking about his future. He didn’t have a bad home life, but his parents struggle just to keep their heads above water financially.

“My dad’s working two or three jobs, just living paycheck to paycheck,” Latu said.

Suddenly, Latu realized he didn’t want to struggle like his parents, and football was his only way out.

“It was going to be just like everybody else — working at Wal-Mart or McDonald’s,” he said. “I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to stay there and be another statistic of not making it out. I wanted to change my life.”

Suiting up

So the eternal slacker gave in and joined the Gibbs football team his senior year. Just like that, a guy with no formal football training — not even youth football — ended up starting at offensive tackle for the Gibbs Gladiators.

“I had some type of athleticism,” Latu said. “They worked with me, and right out of the gate I was starting. I learned step by step.”

Yet after graduation, only one college offered him a scholarship — Northern State, an NCAA Division II team in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

So he went to Northern State, where he was redshirted his first season. It proved to be his only season in Aberdeen. He wasn’t impressed with the talent around him, and, since he was only given a partial scholarship, he felt he could do better. He lobbied his parents for a chance to go elsewhere.

“I knew if I really worked at this, I could get a full scholarship and go on to good things,” Latu said. “I just had to work at it.”

So after one semester at Northern State, Gibbs returned home and tried to figure out what came next. He transferred to College of the Canyons, a junior college in Santa Clarita, Calif, the following spring. His uncle, Lole Takapu, was the linebackers coach at Canyons.

It turned out to be a blessing.

“College of the Canyons taught me a lot of things,” he said. “It was like taking a kid from kindergarten and teaching him high school stuff — things I didn’t know that I could do. They took me out of my comfort zone and taught me new ways to handle this or whatever. It was definitely a blessing.”

After two seasons at College of the Canyons, Latu was a hot commodity. Rivals.com ranked him as the No. 1 offensive lineman coming out of the junior-college ranks and the seventh-best JUCO player period.

He never played a down for the Sooners, however. He failed an online class during the summer — a class he needed to be academically eligible at the DI level.

“I tried to transfer to Utah and Arkansas State,” he said. “I was around for maybe two weeks when I found out I couldn’t go DI anymore.”

And just like that, a guy who had gone from nothing to being on top of the world, suddenly had his world torn from beneath his feet. He didn’t know what to do, and he knew he had little time to figure it all out.

In a 48-hour period after finding out he wasn’t eligible for DI football, he had to plot out his next move, which he knew had to be DII football. He eventually narrowed his choices down to three schools — West Texas A&M, Pittsburg (Kan.) State and ACU.

He listened to offers from the three schools — a process he had gone through coming out of junior college. He found recruiting to be a grueling, mind-numbing ordeal.

“I had to learn quickly who’s real and who’s not, who’s just blowing smoke in your ear and who’s not,” he said.

ACU quarterback Mitchell Gale called him frequently and laid on the hard sell.

“He would call me all the time, but not as a recruiter,” Latu said. “He just wanted to see what was up, checking on how I was doing.”

Latu also noticed ACU’s success at sending players to the NFL.

Then he talked to ACU coach Ken Collums, who talked about investing in him as a person, not just a player, and Latu was hooked.

“He was the one who got me here,” Latu said of Collums.

A faster game

Latu didn’t arrive at ACU until a week into the Wildcats’ fall camp. He was out of shape, and he soon realized it was a much different game than junior college. Not that it stopped the Wildcats from plugging him into the starting left tackle job right away.

“It was a lot to handle, just jumping into the fire,” Latu said. “Without these coaches, I probably would have never made it. I probably would have given up.”

Latu said the coaches tried to keep it simple for him, giving him just what he could handle as he went along. He eventually got comfortable with the system, and now he’s two practices shy of wrapping up his first spring with the Wildcats. ACU, which won’t have a spring game this year, finishes spring drills on Tuesday.

“I feel so much more comfortable,” Latu said. “Just having a season under my belt, I feel like I can do what they expect me to do. I’m also in shape. Academically, everything else is falling into place.”

Casting a big shadow

Collums knew Latu was a work in progress when he lured him to ACU. But he knew the 6-5, 315-pound offensive tackle had all the tools to be a great one.

“The first thing you notice when you’re around Will is just how big he is,” Collums said. “I mean, he’s a good-looking lineman. When you look deeper, you start realizing he hasn’t played a ton of football. Technically, sometimes, he’s not a good lineman, but he still gets the job done. He just doesn’t have a history to draw from.

“He’s still growing as a lineman, and he’s got a big upside. The good thing is he’s got a humble heart, and he’s hungry to learn. He will try to do what you tell him to do. As a person, he’s a great guy. You can’t be around him and not like him. He could fit in anywhere.”

The Wildcats don’t have a lot of offensive lineman right now, so Latu is getting plenty of reps in practice — sometimes too many, Collums admits.

“Sometimes he gets exhausted out there, but that’s OK,” he said. “With every rep, he’s putting experience in his bank.”

Collums wants Latu to shed a few pounds and find his optimal weight. He just isn’t sure what that is.

“The reason he was the top offensive lineman in the country coming out of junior college was his feet,” Collums said. “He was a big guy, whose feet were phenomenal.”

Collums, though, said he sees flashes of greatness from time to time.

“There are times in practice when it’s exactly the way it’s supposed to work,” he said. “He just has to be consistent, and I think he will. He’s doing everything we ask from him in practice.”

A slacker finds a dream

Five years ago, Latu was a slacker, “chillin’” with his friends and brothers. There was no dream about playing in the NFL. Actually, there were no dreams at all.

“None,” he said. “I was just a kid, a little big kid.”

Now, he’s on track to graduate next spring with a degree in sociology, and he’s working to catch the eyes of the NFL. He has the size and tools to play at the next level. It’s just a matter of gaining enough experience to convince NFL scouts and coaches he’s can play at that level.

When it comes to motivation, he doesn’t have to look far. In fact, it usually comes every day in the form of a phone call from his parents.

“They tell me every day, ‘I want you to play football so you don’t have to (live) like this,’” Latu said. “I’ll talk to my dad and tell him I had a long day at practice. He’ll be like, ‘OK, well I’m over here paying bills. What do you want to do, practice or pay bills?’

And that goal is to live a better life than his parents — be it the NFL or putting his college degree to work.

But he really wants to play in the NFL, so he can finally give himself — and his parents — a much better life.

“Just seeing the struggles of my family on a daily basis, that’s what pushes me every day to learn new things and just basically be coachable,” Latu said. “I want to take everything in and be the best player I can be. I know that if I can do that, I can make it in the NFL.”